this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Yeah, so family separation. Trump took an already barbaric system, and made it absolutely catastrophically more barbaric. There are still little kids -- and not a small number of them -- who will never see their families again because they got taken away because their parents committed a misdemeanor, through desperation and from no desire other than just a better life or a chance to live somewhere free from gang violence or poverty, and even when they were following the rules about how to cross over and then request asylum, the best that they were able.
One of Biden's first acts in office was to start a task force to try to find the families for the missing kids, who were at that point still in custody, and reunite them. It wasn't completely successful, because the systems of bureaucracy in their home countries were often chaotic or nonexistent, and the bureaucracy on our end was carelessly disorganized and cruel. But, at least he fuckin' tried.
Immigration in this country is still fairly bad, because it's run by an explicitly racist agency staffed with explicit racists. But, every single proposal Biden's put forth has included some sensible things that objectively need to happen (such as adding judges to the system to help clear the backlog so people aren't sitting waiting to get into the country, or in custody, for absurdly long lengths of time, which is where a lot of the suffering in the current system comes from, when it's not coming from simple racism).
Anyway, the point is that Biden's at least trying to do good things, and then he gets shit for it from Republicans because the system's not cruel enough, and then also shit from "leftists" because the system is still somewhat cruel, ignoring the fact that every single action he's taken has been attempting to make it better than it was, and that all that "leftist" inaction just strengthens the people who are deliberately trying to return it to the "cage full of orphaned and un-cared-for children, people of all ages freezing to death or regularly dying in custody" regime that it was under Trump.
"Somewhat cruel" is an incredible spin to put on the first genocide being broadcast around the clock like this.
Those are our weapons being supplied to do terrible things and people have a right to be upset.
Honestly it's incredible that you are trying to do a lesser-evil kids in cages routine with me in the face of the tens of thousands of dead kids and their families in Gaza. Biden was desperately sending weapons to Israel while everyone could see what was happening with it. That is why people are upset and trying to paint it as 'single issue voters' being blind to the bigger evil is kind of ringing hollow.
If one candidate for mayor was friends with a murderer, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that he'd been protecting his friend the murderer and even sold him the gun, and kept talking about how he was a good guy -- BUT, the other candidate was torturing cats in his basement and also talking about once he's mayor and he has control of the town's police force he needs to start killing or torturing everyone's cats, and also some of the people, I think I would vote for the murderer's friend. If those were the only two options. It's nothing to do with cats versus people. It's what one person does versus what a different person's ally does.
I realize that analogy is not a real ringing endorsement for Biden, but yeah, it's fair; Gaza and Biden's support for Israel aren't real ringing good things about him. But, I do feel it's still very relevant the difference between what Trump did on purpose himself, and plans to continue to do and accelerate the perpetration of, and what Biden's not doing enough to prevent some different person from doing.
You keep characterizing the role Biden is playing in this genocide as "not doing enough to prevent some different person from doing" and while garbled, it belies a tremendous dishonesty.
Biden has bypassed congress to get weapons to Israel numerous times, he had it bundled with must-pass legislation and this entire situation was made non-negotiable by his own hands.
By trying to apologize for his complicity to the point of badgering people to vote your party you implicate yourself in these crimes.
I suggest you do some introspection on how you write off the lives of tens of thousands of people because in my opinion you're making it very clear that ultimately you see some lives as expendable. As a potential coalition partner in your voting block that doesn't give me hope that if protecting my rights became politically inconvenient that we also wouldn't be written off in such a way.
Let me put it this way: If there was a candidate in this election who didn't want to give weapons to Israel (I mean, if voting for them wouldn't just be functionally a vote for Trump), I'd be on 'em in a heartbeat. In the primary I wrote in Bernie Sanders.
That's what I mean, you've written them off as "going to die by our hand anyways" and expect me to want to be complicit too, it's not a great motivator, nor does it inspire loyalty.
I don't think I would recommend loyalty to any American politician. Even for the ones I like, that's just not how I look at it.
In any case though, cheers + all the best